Here Without You
by SteneMichele
Summary: Bella never jumped off of the cliff, and Edward gave in to his desire to see her. But what happens when their reunion is thwarted by a white tomb, a bouquet of red roses and a eulogy given by a werewolf? Edward's POV. Rated for... um... teen angst?
1. Windows

**A/N: I tried Edward's POV (I haven't done that before, so I'm not sure how it'll turn out…) and something completely different. For now, it's a one-shot. I hope you like it!**

I _am weak. I am a coward. I am a monster._ I repeated that in my mind during the run home. _Home. _The simple word sounded so beautiful that it seemed to strike a chord in my arctic heart. I had never had a home before. There had never been an opportunity for words like 'home' when you barely spent several years in any given residence.

But there was no denying it now. I was homeward bound. Though I was extremely fed up with my complete lack of will power, I was _content. _It would be pure ecstasy to see my Bella again. After all of this time…

Naturally, I arrived in Forks after a mere hour or so. The trees were denser than I remember, and their smell struck me with such intensity that I felt like shouting. The pine needles… Such a simple aroma, yet so symbolic of everything that I lived for. _There are only minutes left before we are reunited again…_

For some reason that I did not know, I walked slowly and silently through the town of Forks. There were faces that I recognized strolling around, but it could have been a ghost town and I would not have noticed. Only one face mattered right now, and I was determined to find her.

I turned onto her block, suddenly overcome with an unbearable gravity. Bella was inhaling me, though I could not see her, hear her, _smell her. _The thought of her standing on the sidewalk in the pouring rain in her over-sized raincoat as I sped up to bring her into the shelter of my Volvo; she was much too vulnerable to be alone in the dreary downpour. Memories raced through my mind like a hamster on a wheel. She was standing in the threshold in her sapphire prom dress, just as beautiful as she was with her shower-fresh hair and her torn pajamas. She was sitting in the privacy of her backyard on a rare sunny day, sprawled out on a picnic blanket and laughing as I forced lemonade down my throat. She was perched on the counter with her knees drawn up to her chest, watching intently as I made her a Baked Alaska.

As my eyes fell onto her small house, the place where I had first confessed my love to her, she was suddenly so much more than a memory. She was _real. _There was no denying that; her presence leaked through every non-existent pore in my skin. Suddenly, I knew that I had done the right thing. The knowledge of this relieved me, because my desire was being tainted by guilt, and that was killing my drive.

Beyond all, I knew that I wanted her. This was something so irrefutably definite, something guaranteed to endure an eternity. Something that was only thirty six and a half feet away from the pavement that I stood on.

But something was all wrong. I could smell only three things: Charlie, with his tobacco-like scent, Billy Black, with his ancient cologne, and Jacob Black himself, emitting a foul odor that wrapped around my throat like a boa constrictor. _But there was no Bella._

Though this fact tore through my heart like a thousand javelins, _it made me happy. _My Bella, probably off with Angela and the Stanley girl, was safe from the filthy werewolf. My Bella, probably shopping just like she should be, was safe from the danger of Jacob. And my Bella, first and foremost, was safe from _me. _

In the dominant workings of my menacing mind, this was tragic. The anticipation of a breathtaking reunion had been pulled out from under my feet. But this was fate. This was how it was supposed to be. Yes, what were the chances of Bella being out on a rainy day that I _knew _she would have normally spent reading in her bedroom? Very slim… and very coincidental. Though destiny often worked against my clumsy Bella went it came to tree roots and steep staircases, it was obviously working with her when it came to being protected from me.

All of these thoughts had gone through my mind in one tenth of a second. I did not realize that the scene in the driveway had changed just as much as my perspective had. I could almost feel the anger radiating off of Jacob's skin, though I was certainly not as sensitive to emotions as Jasper was. Yet it was there… A bitter, unadulterated hatred directed towards _me. _And I returned every bit of that hatred. After all, I had left to keep Bella safe, and as soon as I was no longer threatening her life, the pack of teenage werewolves jump in to take over.

Jacob's eyes slowly focused in on my face, and the hair on the back of his neck stood up. Billy was pinching the bridge of his nose, not even bothering to pretend to listen to whatever Charlie was saying. Thwarted by his human senses, Charlie remained completely oblivious to my sudden presence.

With wary eyes, I watched as Charlie helped a dumbstruck Billy up the handicap ramp into the car and slid into the driver's seat. He rolled down the window and leaned out to listen to what Jacob was saying.

"I'm gonna take the Rabbit," the werewolf muttered, "but I'll meet you guys there. You'll be okay?" This confused me. Charlie and Billy went everywhere alone, and Bella's father was perfectly capable of handling Billy and his handicap. There was something hidden in Jake's voice, as it hung in the heavy silence. I narrowed my eyes, jumping out of eyesight into the center of an evergreen tree as Charlie's rusty Toyota ambled by. I could see Jacob standing in the driveway, his hands in his pocket and his black flannel shirt tucked into his trousers haphazardly. Had he turned gothic since I had last seen him? That would make sense; he had gone from a happy-go-lucky fifteen to a dark, morbid 16? _Ah. _Teen angst…

I crossed the street in a flash of beige and denim, not giving Jacob a chance to steady himself as I appeared behind him.

"Leech," Jacob hissed, trembling with anger. _Calm him down, _I reminded myself, _Bella could be in her bedroom… or on her way home. _

"Mutt," I replied, sugar-coating the insult with my velvet voice. I ran my hand smoothly over the tarnished red paint of Bella's truck. _How I secretly loved that Chevy…_

"What are you doing here?" Jacob snapped, startling me. I remained perfectly composed as I turned around on my heels.

"Finishing what I started," I whispered, staring up at Bella's window. I had climbed through it so many times, gazing in as Bella slept. That window was symbolic of so much… The soft cotton that swung back and forth behind the pane, like Bella's chocolate brown hair…

But something was all wrong. That was not the window that had connected Bella and I…

_This window had crime scene tape strewn across it._


	2. Ribbons

I froze, imagining an armed man in a black ski mask climbing through that window. He would take the modest amount of jewelry that Bella had before diving out onto the roof. Maybe he had taken her stereo, as well? That would not be a loss, however, for I had always regretted not taking that stereo myself. The day that I had left my life behind, I had forgotten that Debussy was playing in her room. It had been a mistake, but the image of her walking into her bedroom only to hear our song playing quietly had haunted me for months. It still did, to this day.

"Has there been a burglary?" I demanded shortly, narrowing my eyes at the distressing scene. Jacob grimaced, confused by my words. _Humans_. Sometimes they were so ignorant... Yet sometimes they were so _magical. _My eyes once again landed on the window, struck by the fluorescent yellow tape.

Jacob followed my gaze, comprehension filling his flat black eyes as he realized what I was looking at. He turned back to his old car and began scratching at the lousy paint job.

"Oh," he muttered, grimacing. "_That." _I blinked, frustrated with his lack of information. The agonizing part was that I _could _read his mind, but for somebody as temperamental as Jacob Black, he was doing a damn good job of blocking me out.

"Yes, _'that'," _I repeated patronizingly. "Would you like to tell me what that is?" Jacob considered this, brushing off the obvious sarcasm.

"Not really," he decided, displaying a clear effort at nonchalance. I closed my eyes, trying in vain not to lose my temper.

"I could always make you," I reminded him, flexing my triceps so that the tendons stuck out menacingly. But I had to admit- this did not have the effect that I thought it would; the werewolf had grown some muscles of his own.

I seem to have struck a nerve. Jacob spun around on his heels, trembling violently.

"That's what you always do, isn't it?" he snapped, "Resort to your inhumanity? Show off your muscles? It's sickening and cruel. You left just when she got slightly boring, didn't you? Not enough adventure there?" His words were like knives, yet I kept a cool front.

"You don't know what you're talking about, Mutt," I snapped, throwing in a snarl for effect. _Bella? Boring? _That was a long shot. "Now tell me where she is." Jake hesitated, clearly thinking over various ways to answer my question.

"She's at the funeral," he replied shortly. "That's where I'm headed." I pinched the bridge of my nose, confused.

"Harry Clearwater, right?" I persisted. The poor family. Seth, despite his status as 'werewolf', had a very innocent, pure mind. I could see the answer in Jacob's head at once. _No. _Not Harry Clearwater. _Then who_?  
"Jacob, _where _is Bella?" I hissed, overcome with mounting terror. Leaning in, I inhaled the scent of the rusty red pick-up truck. Floral, yet faded. The scent hit me cold. "I'm giving you one chance, mongrel," I snapped, overwhelmed with horror. "_Tell me where she is." _Though clearly grief-stricken, Jacob seemed to be enjoying my ignorance. He was blocking out the information that I strived through by focusing on his hatred of me.

"You left her, leech," he reminded me, and he might as well have ripped out my throat. "You left her and you left all of us here to deal with her." So he was playing the self-pity card? He didn't know how lucky he was to have been left here with her...

"It was the right thing at the time," I muttered, though I only said it to console myself. It _had _been the right thing at the time, hadn't it?

"If you saw her after that, you would believe me when I say that there was nothing 'right' about that," he countered, and my vast mind was suddenly flooded with images of her- my Bella- lying on the ground in the woods. Her face was filled with such pain, such unadulterated _melancholy, _that I wanted to tear out the entire forest to completely destroy any place that had bared witness to her grief.

I had killed people. I had drunk their blood. Then, I had thought that I was a monster. _But that was nothing compared to this. _

"Stop it!" I growled, though I did not deserve the relief of a clear mind. To my utter shock, Jacob obeyed. It was not willingly, however. He had a mind that did not function on command. As soon as he thought of something, it overtook every thought that he had.

"It was the right thing," Jacob scoffed, clearly tormenting me. I nodded, suddenly agreeing with him.

"You would never understand," I replied bitterly, closing my eyes. I had come back to beg for Bella's forgiveness- not to argue with a hormonal werewolf.

"I would understand," Jacob retorted coldly. "Because believe it or not, you're not the only person who's loved and lost somebody. But I bet that never even crossed your mind, did it? Of course not. It's all about you, isn't it?"I closed my eyes, pinching the bridge of my nose.

"You don't know what you're saying," I pointed out quietly, though it was dawning on me every second. Suddenly, the air was turning to water, suffocating the heartless immortal. It was a nightmare beyond anything that I had ever experienced, like I was hurled off of a skyscraper and stopped two centimeters above the concrete...

Some people say that life goes on. But it really doesn't. I have seen life stop, just _come to an end, _completely. And it is not pretty. It is not blissful. It is not heaven.

Places in my soul that had only recently been filled were now empty again, hollow and transparent like an infant. The thin ribbon that had held me to this universe had been torn in two, because I suddenly knew whose funeral it was. I had known all along.

"It's your fault," Jacob whispered, though it sounded like his voice was miles away. I was watching the scene play out as if I was a bystander, and I could see my horrible, pale body shrinking away into nothingness. The world was collapsing inwards on me, pounding down on my endless misery like a hatchet coming down into my spine over and over again.

"It is my fault," I repeated slowly, saying each syllable as if it weighed a ton. "It is my fault. It is my fault." _It is my fault._

"Glad to see we're on the same page," Jacob muttered, his voice filled with bitterness and loathing. "You should come to the funeral. Pay your respects. Let Charlie beat the living crap out of you. You could at least pretend to be dead when he shoots you; I think that would make him feel as if he avenged his daughter, don't you? If I drove somebody to throw themselves out of their bedroom window, I know that I would at least play dead when their only family tried to kill me." His words dug deep into my skin, because that's all that there was to dig into. I had no soul. No heart. No mind. Just a thin layer of skin no longer attached to a life. He no longer bothered to hide his thoughts. They were all in front of me... Bella's home was no longer the place where she stood in the rain or laughed on a picnic blanket; it was the place where she took that final step into the air and plummeted to the ground, her white eyelet blouse swirling around her limp body. Her home was the place where the first coronary report was delivered. _Yes_, Dr. Gerandy had announced, _A suicide. _

They say that death is the moment that your heart stops beating, but it's really not. It's the moment that the person that means the most to you is gone. That's when you truly have nothing.


	3. Eulogies

For the first time in weeks, maybe months, the sun was warming the bare skin on the back of my neck. There was a gentle breeze, and it was quite warm for December. Rene had been firmly against an outdoor funeral, but my Bella would have wanted it that way. Especially on a day like this. The beautiful weather was mocking me. Of all the rainy days that I had endured here, the sun chose to show itself _today. _How ironic...

A delegation of the local law enforcement workers had gathered in the shade of a willow tree, and some of Bella's school friends were whispering with each other towards the back of the procession. Phil was standing next to me, trying to stifle his shivering. My ex-wife and her new husband had always hated the cold, and their constant complaining was provoking me. There were much worse things that 40° weather. But they knew that, of course. We all did now.

I could hear them muttering. People were patting my shoulder, kissing my cheek... They were all just a breeze in the grass, however. Just the meaningless wind. I paid them no attention.

I had experienced the denial, though that had only lasted for a minute or so. And then the acceptance. That had been the worst. The dreadful truth, more completely undeniable than anything else in the whole goddamn planet...

"Chief Swan!" a voice called, forcing me to unwillingly turn around. I had had it with the well-wishers, sobbing with their remorse. But it was Seth Clearwater calling my name, and he was a nice boy worthy of my attention.

"Seth," I muttered, bowing my head politely. Seth returned the gesture, rubbing his arm awkwardly.

"I'm sorry about everything," he offered, his warm honey eyes coated with fresh tears. "Bella was a great friend to all of us." I nodded, gulping down my tears. I would not cry. Not today.

"She was, m'boy," I murmured, letting my eyelids drop for a second too long. "Go talk to Jacob for me. He's not doing as well as he says." It was true. Poor Jacob wasn't Jacob anymore. No- he was vacant and unmoving, like the evergreen trees behind him. Seth did not budge.

"Actually, sir," he began tentatively, "That's what I have to talk to you about. I was just talking to Jake, sir, and he isn't up to giving the eulogy." I sighed, frustrated. Why couldn't things just go smoothly for once? But things never did.

"Bella wouldn't have needed one anyway," I retorted bitterly. In fact, she would have despised all of the attention. Maybe it _was _a good thing that she didn't have to bare witness to all of this. I choked back that thought.

"But sir, she _deserves _one," Seth reminded me, and I had to agree. "I'd be willing to read what Jake wrote down. I know that we weren't great friends, but she always paid attention to me down at the rez. Jake said you didn't want to say anything..." I scoffed at the idea of speaking. I was not a man to wear my emotions on my sleeves. Not now, when everything that I lived for was gone...

Seth and I were interrupted by a light tap on the shoulder. It was Rene, with her tear-stricken face and her sad blue eyes.

"The sermon, Charlie," she whispered hoarsely, jerking her head to the front of the ceremony where the priest had begun to drone on and on about things that certainly did not do my daughter justice.

"We gather here on this sad day to remember the life of Isabella Swan, daughter of Charlie and Rene, step-daughter of Phil, and friend of many. Bella was born in 1989 and died suddenly, and sadly, by her own hand, this previous Sunday. In the last two and a half days you who are her family and friends have been struggling with the sad mystery that surrounds her death. In the light of this I cannot emphasize enough that this is not your fault. Perhaps there was a straw that broke the camels back, but there is always a previous burden of pain and anguish. For whatever reason, her pain was too great, too heavy for her to bear. I know that you would have done everything in your power if you had known.

"No matter what we say here today, we cannot bring her back, but in the hopes that we can do her memory justice, a short eulogy from a good friend Jacob Black will be given." Jacob cast me a foreboding look. He did not stir from his spot in the back of the procession, so I threw Seth a silent plea. Tactful as ever, the young boy ambled to the front of the gathering and shook the clergyman's hand. I watched apprehensively as he began to speak.

"Good morning," he began routinely. His dark eyes fell on Jacob, though he was perfectly at ease speaking. "I will be giving the eulogy in place of my good friend. I did not have the pleasure of knowing Bella Swan as well as many of you did, but I knew her well enough to know that she was one of a kind. The Bella that many of you know- a daughter, a stepdaughter, a neighbor- was different than the Bella that Jacob and I knew, yet she was completely the same. She was kind and thoughtful, never missing a beat when she sensed that something was wrong..."

Though I was grateful that the young boy had taken the place of myself or somebody better-suited to read the eulogy, I could not restrain my attention as it began to wonder... Ah. _The_ _forest_... How she had loved the forest... My Bella had been thoroughly an indoors-girl, yet I couldn't forget those long walks that she took in the forest, sometimes with- with _that boy. _

As if I had called his wretched name, he was suddenly there. He was half-hidden behind a tree, and there was a vacant sadness in his golden eyes, yet _he was there._ Edward. I had anticipated this moment for the past two and a half days. Naturally, I would rip his throat out, pry off each finger nail with bamboo splinters and then place a bullet in his ridiculously sculpted chest... He would die painfully, though no where near painfully enough. If only he knew what he had put my daughter through.

But there was comprehension in his ochre eyes. He knew everything, and he accepted the fact that it was his fault. Due to the gloomy forest lighting, I could only see half of his face. Now, I was comfortable enough with my masculinity to admit that the boy was good-looking, but there was nothing handsome about his features now. His eyes bore the sadness of a Holocaust survivor, and his jaw was contorted into an uncomfortable grimace.

Yes, he had been the reason for my Bella's death. But he had also been the reason for my Bella's life.


End file.
